Every member of the ad team responsible for promoting Axe grooming products clearly attended class on the day their marketing professors told them that “sex sells.”

Take, for instance, their ad featuring a stampede of half-naked women converging on one lone man (who apparently smells awesome) as the words “spray more, get more” appear on the screen. Not blunt enough for you? How about the shampoo bottle tagline that promises, “the cleaner to you are, the dirtier you get”? All this professional copywriting work sends one very clear message — use Axe, get laid.

Axe’s latest ad campaign, however, ventures into uncharted territory. In this case, the product’s ultimate benefit (sex) lies hidden beneath a very thinly veiled pseudo-PSA about water conservation. “Showerpooling”, as the company calls it, encourages young men to save water by showering with “a like-minded acquaintance or an attractive stranger”. While it’s pretty clear what might appeal to guys about this idea (and we don’t mean the eco-friendly part), Rob Candelino, vice president of marketing for U.S. skin care at Unilever (Axe’s parent company), swears the campaign really is about water conservation. Sort of.

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The correspondents at The Daily Show have some…unflattering opinions of the famous “spin doctors” who handle PR for political figures (and spend most of their waking lives trying to put a positive angle on every story or press mention). It would seem that these well-paid professionals also happen to be cynical, dishonest and, well, evil.

We’d like to argue against the mean stereotypes discussed in this clip, but we don’t have any real-world counter-examples handy. Help us out, PR pros: surely spin doctors occasionally take the opportunity to smile at a child or pet a puppy, no?

On a side note, we do enjoy John Oliver’s obvious love of the word “balls.”

Today in Team Edward news: Actor, vampire and unfortunate cuckold Robert Pattinson hit The Daily Show last night to promote his new movie Cosmopolis (directed by house fave David Cronenberg!), but spent much of the interview trading quips with Stewart as if the two were “just a couple of gals” sharing some secrets (and some not-so-secret ice cream).

Key quote (around 3:00): “My biggest problem in my life is that I’m cheap…and I didn’t hire a publicist.”

Stewart wisely advises RPatz to take care of that problem ASAP. Any volunteers?

Comedy Central and its comedians, are going mainstream. Anyone with a soul is happy to see good comedians succeed. But Comedy Central could be courting a PR morass by extending its brand beyond its television identity and promoting the network’s touring comedians and shows via a host of PR efforts from in-store celebrity appearances to merchandising T-shirts at Urban Outfitters.

Comedy Central’s brand extension is complicated because comedy fans perceive it as edgy and underground. Jon Stewart often quips about working for a lowly cable network. Comedy Central’s underdog brand identity is part of its appeal, particularly at a time when many feel mainstream culture is dominated by powerful corporations that selfishly wield unfettered influence in business and politics. In many respects, Comedy Central was the anti-corporation, the anti-mainstream, the anti-everything.

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CBS News has named a new line up of producers and a director of production for CBS This Morning.

History Channel, BET, Telemundo, and Comedy Central were all ratings winners in 2011. [via Multichannel News]

Live With Kelly is actually doing better without Regis. It’s up 14 percent among women ages 25 to 54.

The founder of The Los Angeles Times Pressmen’s 20 Year Club Ed Padgett was fired this week for an unexplained reason.

Philadelphia Daily News sportswriter Bill Conlin resigned in anticipation of a Philadelphia Inquirer story containing allegations that Conlin molested four people when they were children. Today there’s a story containing allegations from two more women. The Philly Post jumps to his defense.

Piers Morgan gave testimony in the ongoing phone hacking investigation, stating that the Daily Mirror was not involved and didn’t hack anyone. However, when asked about how he got his hands on a voice message from Heather Mills (the former Mrs. Paul McCartney), his answer contradicts hers.

Click through for more media changes.

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MTV Networks Entertainment Group has promoted Tanya Giles to EVP of strategic insights and research, responsible for overseeing research and planning for Comedy Central, TVLand, Spike TV, their websites, and other sites such as Atom.com. The Group’s targets are primarily men between the ages of 18 and 49 and boomers. She was previously SVP of the group.

She’s now also the chief research advisor to the Group’s senior management team, and will be submitting researched marketing plans.

Giles’ work has contributed to such programming as Hot in Cleveland and Tosh.O.

PRNewser posed the question on most people’s minds when the new Comedy Central logo was unveiled last week: Is it worse than the dissed and dismissed Gap logo? Nearly 55 percent of poll respondents said… Yes! The remaining 45 percent voted for the Gap.

After opening the poll, we noticed a tweet or two from people who said they actually like the Comedy Central logo. A big problem is it doesn’t seem fun enough for a station that would air something like the Jim Gaffigan/Hot Pocket bit. Just for laughs, we provide the Gaffigan guffaws below.

Good gracious. Comedy Central just unveiled its new logo and it’s terrible.

Lest we forget, we only recently had another logo mishap. Gap introduced a logo (below) that was so bad, the outpouring of disgust forced them to revert back to the old one.

So we ask you reader: Which logo is worse? And you can check out coverage of the Comedy Central unveiling here and a recap of bad logos for the year here. There’s also a launch video after the jump that has the Comedy Central logo, but also lots of funny clips. Actually, there’s one shot of the logo vomiting that’s pretty good. If they can somehow harness that in a still image…

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